Slowing Down to Speed Up – From First Idea to Prototype

Positively busy at the moment at work and in winter sports, I am happy about rich snow this winter. I come from Lapland, close to the see, from Keminmaa. In professional life, my biggest interest is innovation, and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences helped on sharpen my focus. Here, in response to my alma mater’s request, I tell a story of my search and discovery. The Start of the Career After graduation as a Bachelor in IT from Turku University of Applied Sciences, I worked some time for Teleste Oyj in Turku. My history in Teleste started with a Bachelor’s thesis, which I successfully completed and continued my work for the company. After the company cost cutting and organizational change, I started looking for work in Telecom and very specifically in Ericsson. At that time, my friend who studied with me in Turku was working for Ericsson. He told such exciting stories about his assignments at Ericsson that I started to be envious. In 2009, I got a position in Ericsson. That was not an easy time to get an IT job. Wide networking with professionals, previous experience, and practical engineering knowledge helped to land my dream job. In Ericsson, we were building a 3G network. Our team delivered a very successful project that offered our customers early access to technology which for that time achieved massive data rates. At that time, our team within Ericsson was one of the first to work with this technology, and I was a Service Engineer. I traveled the world and worked for 9 years in this position, continuing as a Solution Architect. After 9 years, I decided to educate myself. I heard many of my colleagues talking of a Master’s degree in Metropolia, saying nice things, so I decided to look more precisely at this option. Studying Master’s Degree Program In daily work, I am closely working with innovation and innovation framework in Ericsson, as it is my ticket to something really interesting. Before I could make a decision if it would be best to work fully with innovation, or I can use a few hours every week, I decided to look for education. After googling all types of programs, my search always brought me the Master’s program in Industrial Management at Metropolia for studies in innovation. After reading a detailed description of the program, it was easy to decide. It explained well what this degree is about, where, who for, and what to do; even what the school day will be. When I looked at the content of the studies, I was very excited and decided to take this very program. It was precisely the thing! Before the Industrial Management curriculum, I was not sure if I should pursue a management role. But after my Metropolia classes, I realized that it is very interesting and something for me. Using my Networks to Test my Interest in Management Role The studies were tougher that I expected, in a demanding way; but I love challenge, it is very good for me as a person. After my Master’s graduation, I started to apply to the management roles inside Ericsson. At the time, I was the sports club chairman at Ericsson Finland as well as a company management employee representative in our local organization. So, I used my network to discuss this role. My activities help me to look at different angles at the business that I am working in: employee management, health and safety, sports clubs management, the company hobby clubs with social activities, etc. I went to my network and discussed with them that I am now interested and feel ready for a management role, and I am very serious about it. Soon after, we had a mentoring session with the top management in Finland, and after a while, they announced a position in Service Management. I got it. In this role, I have a wide responsibility in services delivery including budget, first hand customer negotiations, and developing customer experience and customer satisfaction. I can master all these areas (taught to us in Metropolia). This is a great leverage of many different types of positions. For Innovation You Need to Know the Substance As my next step, I need to maintain and develop the innovation understands and skills, and work on the substance. For innovation, if you discuss it with our instructor Thomas Rohweder, you need to know the substance. No matter how creative you are, a firm professional ground and understanding of real life is needed. In other words, you need to bring your own professional skills into innovation - it could be IT, machine learning, anything related to industrial mega-trends. Importantly, you also need to understand business and finance. So, before my next step upon the managerial ladder, I decided to develop operations excellence, take responsibility over the finances, and master the substance – all these efforts will bring results. When I started in Service Management, I remember how I was surprised with my service contracts. What is this service? How many customers do we have for it? It was a surprise to hear that this service exists for only one customer, and it was especially developed for this one customer, co-designed, co-created – through innovation, value creation, customer experience – all the topics from my studies! (Some departments, e.g. Sales, at that time did not even realize these concepts, but just made it happen). Now it is one of the foundations for successful service. That area is critically important to make customer dreams and wishes happen. On the personal side, since I came from Lapland, it is common there to go camping and hiking. This is simply my passion to go hiking, being in the nature. My other hobbies are sports and music. Before the engineering career, I was very excited about music. So, when I first heard about innovations, it sparked my interest. I realized this is the field where I can be creative to combine applied sciences, practice, engineering – and creation. In the past, it was common to combine science and creativity; the people of Renaissance all loved music, science and arts. Combining Innovation and Development I am interested in a role that allows a big degree of creativity and freedom to innovate. However, if it is purely innovation, such as full-time innovation coach, it creates a lot of costs. In any traditional company it is ‘no-no’, and it is tricky to have such position. So, I want to focus on combining innovation and development. Here, freedom to innovate is super important. It allows to think and create clever efficiency gains such as with automation or create value with targeted investments by validated innovation ideas. I believe that one can cut costs only within limits but with systematic innovation create value where only sky is your limit. In service delivery organization, we need to innovate on everything, even in Sales, as we need to sell good things. If there is an innovative idea, we make it happen. My dream job is to innovate and coach young professionals, as I was coaching PhD students from Aalto, it was wonderful, and PhD students from Stockholm in Ericsson Innovation Awards competition. I would also like to have a role in innovation management, and link innovation routinely to real life operational challenges, and make it work, and make good business out of it. There is a lot of creativity in this - very exciting! The Next Step? One more thing. All my instructors - Zinaida, Thomas, James - all suggested that I should go for a PhD. This is something that I am still thinking about. However, as I am very clear about what I want, innovation is my passion and an innovation management role is my focus. This is what truly makes me tick. [caption id="attachment_2261" align="alignleft" width="620"] Juho Vieruaho plays at the Graduation party. “I have not played for a long time, but it was very nice! I remember from school that the people were exceptional: Merve Özkan with her two PhD’s, my other colleagues – there were many great people with experience at work and from education.[/caption]     Photos by Zinaida Grabovskaia Juho Vieruaho is currently a Service Delivery Manager at Ericsson who graduated as a Master’s of Engineering in Industrial Management from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in 2018.

Society, our work, and our everyday lives require us all to be more innovative and more intentional. Since around 500BC when the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus allegedly noted that ‘Change is the only constant’, the world has been in flux. This has not only continued, but it has accelerated. If we want to develop more innovators, we need to provide spaces that allow for innovators to develop. Responding to this challenge requires everyone to be ready and skilled in how to think more strategically about change, adaption, and innovation. Higher education institutions are a great place to hone these innovation skills, for both the students and the staff that fill them. But for these skills to be taught, the spaces that support this kind of learning need to be appropriate. This need is for the continued relevance of the institution itself but also for the society around it. There must be more innovation both inside and outside of the institution. If we want to develop more innovators, we need to provide spaces that allow for innovators to develop. The Importance of Developing Innovators For people to be innovative in their work, they need to learn the skills of incremental innovation. How it happens, what it looks like, how you get from the starting point to the deployment, and to fundamentally understand that deployment is not the end of the process. This is the kind of understanding that employers are beginning to expect from their employees. Continuous improvement is using innovation skills in everyday work and required structured collaboration. It is how institutions and the alumni from them continue to be relevant in this ever-changing world. Innovations vs. Innovators Developing innovations and developing innovators are different. One is an investment in your core business (or future business opportunities) while the other is an investment in people. This investment in people will provide them some agency over the development of how they do (and develop) their own work. To support individuals to become innovators in their own areas of expertise, we need to give them the right spaces to learn those skills and then to deploy them. The necessary skills are not going to be developed in traditional classrooms or in ordinary meeting rooms. The necessary skills are not going to be developed in traditional classrooms or in ordinary meeting rooms. There needs to be environmental cues (both physical and atmospheric) that this space is different. That you are here to work differently and to learn differently. It must also indicate that we are here to work collaboratively and that we are willing to change how we interact and work together to get different results. Tailoring Spaces for Impactful Collaboration Different actions and outcomes have different needs and what the space provides. It is difficult to have a deep, personal conversation if a group of people are sitting at desks looking in one direction (away from each other and at the back of heads). Different configurations are needed for different parts of any innovation process whether this is in a company, an educational institution, or in a public service. Discussion When there is a discussion, whether it is for learning new things or for sharing knowledge, a circle is often the way this should be done. Everyone can see each other, it promotes communication, and it isn’t hierarchical. Research shows that if you want people to be more collaborative, feel a sense of belonging, and participate more, you should seat them in a circular pattern. This gathering pattern is something that is quintessentially human. When we imagine small groups gathering at all times through history, we imagine circles. We see circles everywhere information is shared and discussions are had: campfires, grade school storytelling, the United Nations, U.S. Congress, the Finnish Parliament, indigenous peoples’ gatherings, healing circles, etc. Gathering in circles is essential to humans feeling seen and heard. “Circular physical arrangements such as these endure because of the powerful influences that people can have on each other when participating in these formations.” - J. Falout, 2014 Ideation When we need to do some intense ideation, we may or may not need tables. Or we may need a small table space to write or draw our idea and some clear wall space to display our ideas. This one part of the process will need to use two different kinds of spaces. This flexibility in spatial design becomes a catalyst for fostering flexible minds. If there is a need to create more innovative and flexible people in our organisations, then the spaces that they work in also need to reflect this. Traditional office setups, with cubicles and open offices, fall short in being able to cultivate true innovators. Small group work Ideas are often developed by small groups. Individuals can be too myopic (seeing only their own ideas) while too big groups will become unwieldy and stagnate as it becomes difficult to find consensus to move on. This means that there needs to be spaces where groups of 3-5 people can develop ideas into concepts. These concepts will need to be developed further into something that can be prototyped. This can only happen in smaller groups. This is a great opportunity to either have multiple different ideas taken to the prototype stage or to have different versions of the same thing be created. This gives everyone a chance to fully participate in the development and prototyping stages as well as to see the options that different groups can produce. There is never one solution to any given problem. Building/prototyping When an individual and a group wish to build a prototype or even two or three, having spaces and tools available to accomplish this is important. Prototypes, for both products and services, come in all shapes and sizes - from room-sized cardboard layouts to handheld tools and Lego floor plans. This means that you can never be sure if people will need tables to display their final prototypes or just need them in the building phase. If they just need them in the building phase, they may need a larger open bit of floor space to roleplay the service/product or to walk people through it. This means that tables need to be easily stored away. Presentations/Pitches Presenting as a skill, whether to your peers or to co-workers, is an important part of finding buy-in and being understood. Presenting to a group can be done either while they are seated in the circular position or in a more standard theatre pattern. But what research tells us is that a circular seating pattern “can activate fundamental human needs and consequently affect persuasion.” When you are pitching an idea to a group, a circular pattern can help persuade them to agree with you. Interesting research finding that may be useful for those people who find themselves in that situation and can affect the environment and how people are seated. All Spaces Are Designed It is important to understand that spaces are always designed. Someone makes a decision about what kind of furniture will be used, where the focus of the room will go, how much furniture is to be ordered. Each little decision is the design. Determining how the space will be used will define what is available for the users. When Static Spaces Fail to Meet Dynamic Needs Consider this: what happens when the needs of the space are dynamic and change even within the confines of one 3-hour block? What happens to those in the room when the space is not changeable? At some point a decision was made to define the space's purpose, closing the door to any alternative considerations. This is most of the built spaces around the world. When we look at learning and teaching environments, they are primarily organised so that the students look at the teacher or to teach professional skills. Neither of these are appropriate for learning or developing innovation skills. The next evolution was to make desks movable, so students could participate in group work. But still the desks took up most of the classroom floor space. Again, what happens when you don’t really need the desks and what you need is for people to do less listening and more doing? Now the desks are a bit of a liability. It reminds me of the poster that compared different modes of transportation and the space they take up (car vs bus vs bicycle). It exemplifies how much space “things” take up in the surrounding space. In their example it was cars, in mine, it is desks. Many are expecting different results from the same environment. I don’t disagree that there are still concepts that need to be learned individually and, in an orientation, where you are looking at a teacher. But it is important to remember that this is not how everything needs to be taught. Increasingly, spaces are being set aside for different ways of learning. But they are rare and maybe not fully understood. This is the same problem in many corporate settings. Many are expecting different results from the same environment. In big companies there may be open spaces available but they are not necessarily set up for impactful collaboration, some will be meeting spaces, some will be presentation spaces. Shaping Tomorrow’s Innovators We all need to make sure that our learning spaces are future focused and fit for purpose. The goal is to make sure that both inside and outside educational institutions people are able to confidently face and address the challenges ahead. We all need to make sure that our learning spaces are future focused and fit for purpose. At the beginning of allocating learning spaces and planning teaching, it would be important to considering the five above needs: discussion, ideation, group work, prototyping, and presentations, to achieve the best learning outcomes. Writer Pamela Spokes, BA, MA, MBA, AmO works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has many years of experience working in higher education institutions in different countries and in different roles. She teaches the English Pre-Incubator Programme and Service Design in different Schools.

Team members who trust one another can better communicate and coordinate behaviors, given their openness, familiarity, and reliability. (1)  Meaning of trust in multi- and interprofessional social and health care teamwork is essential, to understand and create a more balanced and emotional, sustainable working environment. In trusting the working environment, people feel safety (2). It increases satisfaction and involvement in work. There are two different approaches to trust from an individual’s point of view: Affective trustis based on interpersonal dynamics like co-identification and familiarity. It is also often emotional, such as offering feelings like becoming understood or believing in others’ goodwill. In contrast, Cognitive trust is based on people’s competence and predictability. (1). Both of them are needed to recognize and create a trusting working environment. Especially in multi- and interprofessional teams this needs to be taken into account, because team members’ professional backgrounds and approaches can be different from each other. However, it is important to remember that trust is a very multilateral/multifaceted phenomenon, and it has been traditionally approached as a part of social capital (3, 4, 5). At work, its complicated and systematic nature is relevant to be recognized and remembered; even when approached from an individual point of view or as a skill. Trust as a skill Trust is often defined as a ‘phenomenon,’ ‘value,’ attitude’, or ‘emotion’, but in this text, we want to approach it as a ‘skill’ in a professional context. By that, we mean that it can be approached as a skill to improve trusting relationships between professionals, within professional networks and with a client/patient. According to European Qualifications Framework, EQF (6), skills refer to the ability to apply knowledge and to use expertise to complete tasks and solve problems. In the context of EQF, skills are described as cognitive (e.g., involving the use of logical, intuitive, and creative thinking) or practical (e.g., involving manual dexterity and the use of methods, materials, tools, and instruments). Trust – as a skill – can be located to soft skills or transversal skills. Transversal skills are transferable skills from one field to another. Transversal skills can be taught and learned (7). Trust can be seen to be part of interpersonal/social & emotional skills (Pedagogical Framework in ITSHEC project 2022). Trust in everyday professional practice Interaction and collaboration between people in small everyday practices can be very makeable for people. They can strengthen the feeling of respect, belonging and feeling of welcoming. For instance, neuroscientist Paul Zak (8) has shown in his studies that “when someone shows you trust, a feel-good jolt of oxytocin surges through your brain and triggers you to reciprocate”. According to that, there is a strong link between trust and overall health and psychosocial well-being (9). This is one of the reasons why trust should be approached also from a pedagogical point of view, as a skill. Trust, as a skill, can express itself in the following ways in everyday practices as an ability to: open a dialogue keep timetables and promises (even with insignificant matters) behave predictably express goodwill to other outline shared goals, benefits, and risks set professional boundaries without losing kindness and caring attitude cooperate with others and to take account of various emotions in various contexts improve non-discriminatory atmosphere show interpersonal and social-emotional skills. However, even if trust has often been approached as individual’s characteristics (or skills), attention needs also be paid to cultural trust propensity. In other words, it characterizes how willingly people trust each other in different cultures (10). Feeling of trust makes people happier with their lives (8). The skills of building trust are reflected in everyday interaction (11). Changing working environments and trust In global online work, employees evaluate reliability of a new person based on their speech, behavior, and perceived emotional state (12). For instance, ad hoc or project-specific organizations also need a climate of trust (swift trust). Then there is not so much time to build trust (13). In addition, virtual work can disturb quantity of interaction, but also the quality of engagement. Especially when a team is geographically dispersed, the number of modes of communication is limited. (1). Moreover, from supervisors’ point of view trust is traceable to reciprocity, open interaction, common goal and commitment, mutual respect, predictability, and security (14). We need to pay more attention to understanding working conditions and different working environments behind trusting environments. Trust is not just a phenomenon, but it can also be seen as a transversal skill, which can be learned and developed. It demands from people awareness and willingness to self-reflection and open feedback. Trust and kindness are mutually flourishing and empowering. In a trusting relationship, the starting point is optimistic and hopeful, rather than always expecting the worst, suspecting, or fearing failures. In ITSHEC project, we will improve awareness of trust as a professional skill, as part of transversal skills. Lack of trust makes everyday life more difficult, unpredictable, and demanding. We need professional social and health care services to improve and strengthen people’s lives. Trustworthy professionals actualize a human-centered approach. Authors Eija Raatikainen (PhD) is a Principal lecturer in Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Her academic focus is ”Trust” and “Empathy”, as phenomenon in different fields; like in Social Work, multiprofessional co-creation and project work, as well as educational practice and pedagogy. Additionally, she has a long track record as a project manager in various projects. Katriina Rantala-Nenonen (M.Soc.Sc.) is a senior lecturer at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. She teaches social sciences and works in national and international projects of social services and education. In ITSHEC project she works as a developing lecturer. The article has been published earlier in Tikissä-blog of Metropolia University of Applied Sciences  References Dinh, J. V., Reyes, D.L., Kayga L., Lindgren C., Feitosa & Salas, E. (2021),Developing team trust: Leader insights for virtual settings, Organizational Dynamics, 50, (1). 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